ahwman

There is a relatively simple solution to this dilemma which I have been employing for several months successfully. I currently have two Echo's, one in my master bedroom and one in my kitchen. I use different trigger keywords to activate each to avoid crosstalk/ confusion. By using occupancy sensors in each room, a variable - "Occupancy" is set to either "0" or "1" based on motion triggers. When issuing a connected home command, the appropriate ISY program is launched using an if/then to determine which room is occupied and then launches the appropriate action for the currently occupied room. This allows me to issue commands without any prefixes and works beautifully. Example: "Alexa, turn on the television" will turn on the TV in which ever room is currently occupied.", "Alexa, turn on the ceiling fan light light" will do the same even though I have several ceiling fans throughout the house. "Alexa, turn on the History channel" will tune that channel on my TiVo depending on which room I'm in and so on and so forth... Since I live alone, this works perfectly since I can't occupy two rooms simultaneously, however this could be a challenge in busy households as it could confuse the ISY in terms of determing room occupancy in which case some tweaking may be in order... Chuck

Is it possible to use antonyms with standard connected home devices? I don't use a Harmony Hub but rather a different WIFI to IR blaster and have set up many custom commands disguised as scenes on my ISY all of which work great. The only caveat is that I can't use reserved words such as play, pause, volume, etc. since the Echo uses these words for direct control. So instead of saying "Alexa, turn on volume up", I'm having to say "Alexa, turn on speaker up"... Chuck

Thanks for the update, that is frusterating... Funny, I was nervous about calling support like yourself since I don't actually have a Hue Bridge. Looks like you did a good job thinking quick on your feet...

Did they at least acknowledge that there are currently issues with connected home devices not working correctly? Also, were you able to get any clarification as to why we're getting "That command doesn't work on that device"?

Yep, same thing I get. This is the response I got back from Amazon, should make you smile... Thanks for writing to us with your concern. I'm Jairam from Amazon.com Echo support team. Firstly I'm glad that my colleague "Rachel" was able to provide you the required resolution for resolving your problem. I understand from your concern that you have written to us regarding the same issue that is been happening with one of your family members. This is not what we want our valued customers to experience. In this case, I'd like to inform you that this is not been happening with every user it looks like we need undergo advanced troubleshooting for the device and make sure the issue can be resolved right away. I'd like to inform you that there is been no defect from our end, Please be assured of this. I'd request you to please contact from the account where you are having trouble with or I'd request you to ask your family members to contact us so that we can gather required information and resolve it as soon as possible as per your satisfaction. Please note that advance troubleshooting steps can be tried only via live assistance as it includes some sensitive steps that need to be followed which is not possible via e-mail. I hope you understand us in this regard. You can reach Amazon Echo Customer Support by phone directly and toll-free at 1-877-375-9365 or by e-mail at echo-support@amazon.com. Else you can place a call back request and we'll call you back within 5 minutes : To contact us via phone: http://www.amazon.com/clicktocall I hope this troubleshooting helps! We look forward to see you soon until then have a great time ahead! Best regards, Jairam

That's one of my favorite skills .

When you ask a lighting command do you get back "That command doesn't work on that device"? Or something else?

Wish we could approach Amazon for some confirmation on this. My uncle owns a physical Hue Bridge and mentioned that he was also having these issues. I'm assuming that this has nothing to do with the fact that we're using a software emulator...

Guys, It seems that this evening has been one of the worst in terms of getting back "That command doesn't work on that device". I was getting it about 30% of the time. I could say the same command back to back and one would work and the other would fail. I approached Amazon and they claim this isn't a known issue and that I would need to call in for tech support. Since I'm using a software emulator, I don't suspect that call would go so well. I don't remember this being an issue when I first set up my HA bridge (BWS Systems) about 3 weeks ago. I love using my Echo's for my HA and am a little bummed this seems to be happening more often... Chuck

Just to be clear, I'm only referring to issuing connected home device requests, not generic Echo operation. Example: "Alexa, turn on kitchen lights" and her response is "This device does not support that command". I then repeat the exact same command and her response is "ok" and the lights turn on as usual. Again, this happens maybe once every 25 times or so... Chuck

Hmm. I've had it happen a few times today. I was thinking of contacting Amazon, however I reconsidered since I'm using an emulator and wasn't sure how my requests might look on their end... Chuck

Bfish, I'm so happy to hear you got it working, congratulations! Regarding the batch startup file, that's a piece of cake. Just place the .bat file into the emulator folder and then simply create a shortcut to it by right clicking on your desktop and chosing "create shortcut", then simply browse to the .bat file, then place the shortcut you just created in your Windows startup folder and you should be golden... The emulator works great, however I am noticing an intermittent issue where Alexa will respond to my request with "That device doesn't support that command". It's not related to any specific device and simply asking the same request again will work. I'm trying to determine if this is on Amazon's end or related is some way to the emulator or mapping of devices. Let me know if you experience this as well. Enjoy! Chuck

Brad, I spent MANY hours trying to get the emulator to run and was about to give up, however I started closing running apps in my task bar and eventually found the culprit which in my case was TiVo Desktop which apparently was using port 8080. That said, I doubt you're experiencing a port conflict as that generally will cause the emulator to error out and close itself which is what was happening with me. If the emulator appears to run and stay open, I would think the problem lies elsewhere... Don't give up, it's worth it once you get it running. Chuck

All of my lighting scenes already have the word "Light" or "Lights" appended to each friendly name. I think I have to chalk this up to issues on the cloud as I haven't changed a single thing and now it seems to be working well again. Hopefully it was just a rare hickup... Update: since my last post, I've noticed this happening sporadically again. Not sure what's causing it...

So this just fixed itself? I'm just curious if this is a cloud issue on Amazon's side, or an intermittent issue with the HA server...

I've recently been having the exact same issues. Alexa, turn on ceiling fan and I get "That command doesn't work with that device". I ask the same command again and it works. I also rediscovered all of my devices, however all were rediscovered correctly...

+1

Yeah, turning on "as motion is sensed" seemed to do the trick. Thanks guys for all your help! Chuck

I thought about doing this, however my concern is that this will greatly diminish battery life...

Hey everyone, I've been playing around with this for quite a while and haven't found a solution that works for me. I have two questions: • I really don't want to pu my motion sensors into sending only "On" commands as they serve double duty with my security system. That said, I fail to understand why my motion sensors never seem to fail to trigger the "On" command to the SwitchLinc's they are linked to, yet every once in a while they don't receive the "Off" command and the light stays on indefinitely. If the command is getting lost due to WIFI interference or something along those lines, why does it only happen with then"Off" command • I'm considering putting the motion sensors into Hey Paul, I finally got around to trying this method and though it works, there appears to be one major caveat at least the way I'm using it. I have motion sensors in my bathrooms linked a SwitchLinc and as you suggested, set the MS to only send "On" commands using a 30 second timeout. The issue is that I'm finding that the light will go out even as I continue to move about and see that the MS is sensing motion. I then have to wait until the timeout has expired than new movement will once again trigger the light/program to restart. It's almost as if I have to time my movement properly so that the program timer resets after the MS timeout has expired but before the ISY program timer expires. I thought that the motion sensor would continue to reset the timeout as motion was sensed thus causing the program timer to reset and keep the light on. I hope I'm making sense... Chuck Here's my program: If Control 'Master Bathroom / (MBA) Motion Sensor' is switched On Then Wait 1 minute Set 'Master Bathroom / (MBA) Wall Light' Off Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action')

I have this working with my Roamio, however no joy on my Mini. Has anyone had any luck with this on the Mini? Thanks, Chuck

Makes sense Paul. I'll play with it tomorrow. Thanks so much! Chuck

That's exactly what I'm looking for. Will this still work if my motion sensors send both on/off commands or must I disable off commands being sent? Thanks again, Chuck

Paul, Using this strategy, does this turn off the light even if a new motion event is sensed before the timeout? What I want to avoid is a static timer which turns off the light at a predefined time once motion is sensed for the first time. Rather, I want to mimic the behavior of the motion sensor whereby it will only turn off the light if no new motion is sensed before the timeout period. Chuck

I have motion sensors in each of my bathroom's linked to an Insteon SwitchLinc dimmer. For the most part they work very well, however every once in a while the "off" command doesn't trigger (I suspect RF interference is the culprit). When this occurs, I can see that the offending motion sensor status shows as "On" well after the timeout period which confirms that the ISY never received the updated status. That said, the light stays on indefinitely in that situation. I've been trying to write a simple program to monitor the status of the light/motion sensor which would turn the light off when this situation occurs. So far, none of my efforts have proven successful. Any ideas? Chuck